New research by three physicists has raised concerns over the safety of the
Large
Hadron Collider (LHC), which is due to
restart
this summer.
Concerns had already been raised that the activities within the 27km particle
accelerator could create black holes, which could in turn destroy the planet.
A
lawsuit
was even filed to prevent the LHC from operation which sparked
ribaldry
from internet users.
CERN, which operates the LHC, commissioned an
extensive
study which concluded that, if black holes were formed by the LHC, they
would last for only milliseconds before extinguishing themselves.
However, a new study by Roberto Casadio of the University of Bologna, and
Sergio Fabi and Benjamin Harms of the University of Alabama, has concluded that
the black holes could survive for more than a second.
"While the growth of black holes to catastrophic size does not seem possible,
it remains true that the expected decay times are much longer than is typically
predicted by other models," the physicists state in a brief paper posted at the
scientific discussion website
ArXiv.org.
The danger would occur if the black holes stayed in existence long enough to
absorb material and become self-sustaining, but the physicists say it is more
likely that they would either collapse or stabilise at a very small level and
drift out into space.
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